1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to operations of an apparatus which receives a broadcast wave and records a program. More specifically, the present invention relates to an operation of a recording apparatus after power is turned on and until recording is started, and, an operation of a recording apparatus when power is turned off.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recording apparatuses (recorders) for recording broadcast programs onto a storage medium such as a magnetic tape, a DVD, or a hard disk have been prevalent. By using such a recording apparatus, a user can not only record a program which is being played back, but, with the use of a scheduled recording function, can also record a program on a designated channel at a designated point in time.
FIG. 5 shows the functional block structure of a conventional recorder 100. Consider a situation where the recorder 100 has not been powered on, but the user wishes to record a program which is being played back on a TV set (not shown). When the user powers on the recorder 100, a message that the recorder 100 has been booted is displayed on a state display section 140, and the recorder 100 supplies power to its respective components in a predetermined order, and initialize them.
FIG. 6 shows an exemplary procedure by which the recorder 100 performs initialization. When the user presses a power button (not shown) on the main body of the recorder 100, power is supplied from a power controller 130 to a signal processing circuit 110, and the components in the signal processing circuit 110 are booted one after another. Specifically, a system controller 111 is initialized first, thus transitioning to a state where it is capable of executing programs. The system controller 111 reads a program from a ROM 120b in a data storing section 120, and loads the program onto a RAM, 120a. Based on this program, then system controller 111 initializes an operation system (OS). Concurrently with this process, power is also supplied to a drive section 150, and a boot process is started so that drive section 150 becomes ready to perform data read/write to a DVD 51.
After the OS initialization, the components in the signal processing circuit 110 are initialized. This initialization is performed in the following order: a playback processor 116, a tuner 160 as well as its input signal processor (e.g., an A/D conversion section) 161, a digital input/output interface 112, a recording processor
and then a recording controller 114. When the boot of the recording controller 114 has been completed, it is then confirmed whether the boot of the drive section 150 has been completed or not. These steps pertain to a hardware initialization process. Thereafter, a software initialization process, e.g., initialization of the file system and application software, is performed.
Once the hardware and software initialization processes are completed, a digital signal of a broadcast program is input to the interface 112, and compressed/encoded by the recording processor 113. The resultant data (e.g., program data) is stored (buffered) to a buffer memory 115 under the control of the recording controller 114. When a predetermined data amount is reached, the drive section 150 writes the buffered data on the DVD 51. Thus, it may be said that recording is started at the point where program data begins to be stored in the buffer memory 115. For the above-described technique, one may refer to Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2004-147200, for example.
The above-described process is generally the same also for scheduled recording, except that the recorder 100 is powered on by the power controller 130, which internalizes a timer microcomputer (not shown), rather than by the user.
A conventional recorder must perform various initialization processes after being powered on, thus causing a problem in that it requires a long boot time before recording can be started. For example, some DVD recorders that are currently on the market may take a boot time of about 30 seconds. Since it is impossible to record any program during the boot time, a user of such a recorder cannot begin recording from the exact scene at which the user wished to begin recording.
Note that a recorder might be operated in such a manner that the recorder is powered on earlier than the actual recording start time, thus completing booting by the recording start time, whereby a program will be recorded without disruption problems. However, such an operation is only applicable to the case where the recording start time is previously known (e.g., when performing a scheduled recording), and is not applicable to all kinds of recording.